Professor Rachel Cowgill
Professor of Music

Profile

Biography

I am a cultural-historical musicologist, whose work explores the relationship between music, history and culture through a wide range of topics. Currently, these encompass:

• Mozart reception
• opera studies
• British music and musical cultures
• musical internationalism, diplomacy and commemoration
• music, gender and identity
• music as heritage
• digital musicologies, community archiving and performance ephemera.

My publications include journal articles, book chapters, collaborative papers, and several co-edited collections: 

• Music and Ideas of North (forthcoming for Routledge)
• The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2012)
• Art and Ideology in European Opera (Boydell & Brewer, 2010)
• Victorian Soundscapes Revisited (LCVS, 2007)
• Music in the British Provinces, 1690-1914 (Ashgate/Routledge, 2007/2017)
• Europe, Empire and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music (Ashgate/Routledge, 2006/2017)

I joined the University of York as Professor of Music in 2019, following professorships at Huddersfield (Head of Music and Drama, 2014–19), Cardiff (Head of School, 2013–14) and Liverpool Hope universities, and a senior lectureship at the University of Leeds.

At York, I am currently Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Director of the Humanities Research Centre. I have also been University Research Theme Champion for Creativity and Chair of the Faculty Promotions Committee (2021–23), as well as Principal Investigator for InterMusE, The Internet of Musical Events: Digital Scholarship, Community, and the Archiving of Performance, and project lead for StreetLife: Using York’s Historic High Streets as Heritage Catalysts for Community Renewal (2021–23).

I was state-educated and studied at Goldsmiths College and King’s College London, graduating with an MMus in Historical Musicology and PhD on the reception of Mozart’s music in late Georgian London (2000). Since then, my research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, American Musicological Society, UK Government Community Renewal Fund, and by visiting fellowships from the Huntington Library California, Clare Hall Cambridge, and the University of Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).

I have served as a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association (2012–17), Chair of the National Association for Music in Higher Education (2013–16; Vice-Chair, 2016–18), and more recently as a Director of the North-American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA) and Chair of the RMA’s LGBTQI Music Study Group. I am a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association (2007–13) and a founding co-editor (since 2006) of the Boydell and Brewer book series ‘Music in Britain, 1600-2000’, which now lists over thirty titles. I am also on the Editorial Board of the White Rose University Press.

I am an experienced doctoral supervisor and mentor for early career research fellowships (Leverhulme Trust and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Actions schemes).

In December 2023 I was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list ‘for services to Culture, to Education and to the Arts’.

Professional fellowships and elected/invited memberships:
•    Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS)
•    Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
•    Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
•    Member of the Chartered Management Institute (MCMI)
•    Member of the AHRC UK Peer-Review College
•    Member of York Archaeological Trust